USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > Centennial history of Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio, Vol. I > Part 3
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Better grades and better material have been called into practical operation in these days, but nearly every important highway builded during the century and converging upon Columbus either follows or lies parallel to an ancient line of travel, for two centuries ago-before that time and since that time- the point now Columbus was a center of population, barbarian commerce, and travel, from opposite the mouth of the Kanawha to the mouth of the Maumee from southeast to northwest; from the mouth of the Miami to the mouth of the Cuyahoga from southwest to northeast; from Sandusky bay to the mouth of the Scioto from north to south, and from the mouth of the Captina to the headwaters of the Wabash, where St. Clair was vanquished, from east to west, and all these lines crossing at a common center were at the junction of the Scioto and the Olentangy.
Modern Lines of Travel.
The twentieth century lines of travel and traffic converging here are practically the same as to numbers, but incomparable when it comes to the solution of modern problems of economics, travel and transportation. Instead of seven or eight thoroughfares, including the rivers, radiating to the four
LUCAS SULLIVANT Founder of Franklinton, afterward Columbus
LYNE STARLING
One of the Founders of Columbus
JOHN KERR One of the Founders of Columbus
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corners of the state, there are now eighteen steam railways reaching out from the center, with direct contact and connections with the trunk lines across the continent, and eight operating and other developing electric lines entering and radiating therefrom, sufficient in motive power and equipment to have removed all the savage population of a century and a half ago, along with their personal belongings and lares and penates, within the Ohio valley to the foot hills of the Apalachian range in twenty-four hours. Hence it may be set down among the verities that while nearly all roads in Ohio led to Colum- bus in aboriginal days, all (and of course more) roads lead to Columbus in these more progressive days.
CHAPTER II.
FIRST PEOPLE; FIRST EVENTS; FIRST FOOTPRINTS; FIRST SUCCESSES.
Rome of Ancient Legends; Columbus of Modern Days.
A large portion of the subsequent history of Rome would no doubt be lacking in interest, at least among the younger readers, were it not for the legends of the laying of the foundations of the Eternal City, mythical and credulity-testing though they may be. The story of the abandoned Romulus and Remus being suckled and reared to vigorous youthhood by a female wolf may have been mercifully invented to soften the memory of the wife of some guard- ian who had the two boys in charge. The narration of the just-before-dawn vigil of the two youths on the two convenient hills, "looking out for signs," and seeing diverse numbers of vultures, leading to the straining of their fraternal rela- tions, some seven hundred years before the Christian Era, may have been an early form of the snipe hunting expeditions of, say, A. D. 1850, and down to the present day, among the youths of Columbus and outlying country.
The building of the walls of Rome by Romulus, and the contempt shown toward the architect and his work by Remus, who leaped over them and who was chased thence and founded the City of Rheims, according to his own ideas of municipal architecture, may be readily toned down to a foolish boyish quarrel of some minor detail, and the story of the Sabine women is an old- new-endless one of the selection of the loveliest. Young ladies being scarce in Rome, the boys over there no doubt challenged the Sabine youths to play a prehistoic game of baseball. Their sweethearts came out, of course, to cheer and encourage them, but when the Roman Senators shut out the Sabine Slashers in the ninth inning, with a score of 21 to 0, not only the game was lost, but the girls also, and they naturally clung to the Senators ever after.
This may not be the exact narration of the events in their order, but they would naturally and perfectly furnish the historical raw material out of which tha classic poets formed the finished story.
But in any event, and without regard to the accuracy of detail, they told about the first people and the first things and the original methods, without
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which in some form the rest of the story-called in courtesy History-would be desperately dry reading and spiritless. One must know of the beginning before one can teach the lesson of successive comparisons in the progress of events. The great things of the present are the grown-up children and grand- children of the comparatively little things of the past. We must know some- thing of the parent before we can properly estimate the child, as well as something about the child before we can fully analyze the matured individual, or, analyzing backward, properly estimate the progenitor. The very mys- ticism and glamour of the classic poets which surround the practical begin- nings of Rome enhance the interest, to most readers, in the story of its subse- quent progress. So also as to Columbus.
Christopher Gist, Agent of the Ohio Company.
The first white men to visit the present site of Columbus were Christopher Gist, of Maryland, and George Croghan, an English trader, piloted by one Andrew Montour, a French-Indian half breed of the Senecas, no doubt, some time during the winter of 1750-1751. At, and preceding this period, the English colonies of the east and northeast were deeply interested in curbing, and eventually eliminating, the Canadian French influences. This was especially true with an association of Virginia and Maryland planters and English merchants, who realized the vast importance of keeping the French traders, and French influence of all kinds, out of that vast territory lying south of the present Canadian line.
These men probably never thought of what the future had in store in the shape of trade and commerce, exceeding for a single business day from nine to three all the trade then being contended for during an entire year. A long line of English trading posts were being stretched across the practically unknown continent parallel with the 38th degree, and Mr. Gist was the active agent of this association, with well-nigh unlimited discretionary powers.
One of these English trading posts was established at the point of the junction of the Great Miami and Loranaie creek, upon an extensive prairie, in 1749, and was named Pickawillany, English improvement on the Pickqua- lines, a tribe of Indians. It was to visit this post that Gist and his companions made the trip now under discussion. It was, in fact, the first point of English occupation within the present boundaries of Ohio, and here the English traders throughout the entire trading belt met and conferred between them- selves and their Indian friends and allies.
On October 31, 1750, Gist set out from Old Town, on the Potomac, in Maryland, and crossed the Alleghenies, following the usual route of travel to the Ohio river that seems to have existed from time immemorial. Crossing the upper Ohio, he made his way to the then Indian village at the forks of the Muskingum, where the city of Coshocton (Goshocking, the Place of the Owls), now stands, much more pacific and inviting than its Indian name would portend.
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From that point Gist and his two companions came westward, holding conferences in the Indian villages at Wacatomika, Black Hand (so named for the black print of an enormous human hand on a high rock overhanging the Pataskala river, through which a tunnel of the Columbus, Newark and Zanesville electric road is pierced), where an Indian potentate was located; thence to the present Buckeye lake, then little more than a great sedgy morass, full of fish, which the naked Indian children waded in and caught with their hands, which they skirted, coming on to the High Bank, where they crossed by canoe ferry to the Indian town or village that occupied a portion of what is now the west side.
Here a conference was held in February, 1751. Later the three travelers went down the Scioto and the Ohio to the mouth of the Great Miami, up which they journeyed to Pickawillany, where a prolonged conference was held, under the direction of Gist, between the English traders and the tribal representatives of the Weas, Pickqualines, Miamis, Piankeshaws, and other sub-nations contiguous thereto, and a treaty, practically of alliance, was agreed upon, the French flag, which had for years floated over the chief tepee of Pickawillany, was hauled down and British sovereignty was recognized.
Under the terms of the treaty the town rapidly rose in importance, Gist recording in his journal that it was the strongest town in the western country, as well as the most important one.
But the French government in Canada was not in the dark as to the progress of events on Riviere a la Roche, or Rock River, as the Miami was called, but was kept constantly informed by their Indian and half-breed spies. So it came about, a few years later, that, in an unexpected moment, the com- bined French and more northern Indians swooped down upon Pickawillany, and the "coming" emporium of the great Ohio wilderness went up in smoke and flame, and it was blotted off the map. But this part of the story belongs not to a Columbus history, but to the more comprehensive history of the state and its parent, the Northwest Territory.
Enter Mr. James Smith.
There may have been other white men at that period (between 1751 and 1760) who threaded the mazes of the then Columbus, but history fails to present another than James Smith, who was held a captive among the Indians west of the junction of the two rivers and who hunted and trapped along the rivers and their principal tributaries in this territory. Mr. Smith's personal narration is full of interest and gives one a fine insight into the character of the Indian nomads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A complete resume of his graphic narrative appears in an appropriate chapter devoted to early reminiscences and later day historical gossip of the Buckeye capital.
In the meantime, James Smith must rest upon his laurels of being the second early comer of the white race into the future capital, illuminated with this brief description, written by him, of the then site of the present city: "From the mouth of Olentangy (applied to the Big Darby), on the east side
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of Scioto, up to the carrying place (in Marion county), there is a large body of first and second rate land, and tolerably well watered. The timber is ash, sugar tree, walnut, locust, oak and beech." This is no doubt the first written description of the point at and neighboring upon the lands on which the city of Columbus stands.
The First Permanent Resident.
The honor of being the first permanent resident within the present boundaries of Columbus seems to belong, without question, to Lucas Sullivant, a native of Virginia, born in 1765. He migrated to Kentucky when an orphan lad, where he learned surveying in the field, not in the schools.
As a deputy under General Richard C. Anderson, surveyor general of the Virginia Military District of Ohio, Mr. Lucas led a body of assistants into the wilderness of the Scioto valley northward, and in the summer and autumn of the year 1797 surveyed and platted and became proprietor of the town of Franklinton, long since made an integral part of Columbus. Here he erected his house, installed his helpmeet, set up his lares and penates; here he reared his children, and here he lived until he passed into the Great Beyond at the age of fifty-eight.
Some of Sullivant's Compatriots.
Among those who came with Sullivant into Franklinton as permanent settlers the following names have been handed down by the earlier historians: Joseph Dixon, George Skidmore, William Domigan, James Marshall, three families named Dearduff, McIlvain and Sells respectively, consisting of several persons, young and old, but not separately designated; John Lisle and family, William Fleming, Jacob Grubb, Jacob Overdier, Arthur O'Harra, Joseph Foos, John Blair, and John Dill, the latter of whom seems to have come unac- companied from the town of York, Pennsylvania; Jeremiah Armstrong and John Brickell, and probably others whose names are forgotten. These, of course, were the first citizens, and among them Messrs. Armstrong and Brickell were the heroes of adventures which will be presented in the chapter of local historical events and gossip.
Sullivant was married in 1801 and led in the settlement of the town, of course. A little later than those aforenamed were Lyne Starling, Robert Rus- sell, Colonel Culbertson of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, with numerous sons, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, unmarried sons and unmarried daughters, and withal a man of wealth and of distinction.
The First White Woman.
The first white woman born east of the Scioto river and in Columbus proper was Keziah Hamlin, who afterward married David Brooks, proprietor of "The White Horse Tavern," one of the famous early hostelries of the Ohio capital. She was born October 16, 1804, in a log cabin which stood upon what is now the site of Hoster's brewery.
MRS. KEZIAH (HAMLIN) BROOKS
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At that time there lived in the vicinity a sub-tribe of Wyandots, who were on friendly terms with the scattered white settlers. They had a great fondness especially for Mother Hamlin's corn bread, and were in the habit of paying the family informal calls and helping themselves informally to what- ever they might find in the larder. The only explanation they offered was to leave with Mrs. Hamlin the finest cuts and quarters of venison, so that if she and the lord of the household were left temporarily short on bread they found themselves long on meat. While this kind of exchange was one-sided, the Hamlin firm never had occasion to complain that they had been cheated.
When little Keziah came the Wyandots took great interest in the little pale face and never lost an opportunity to admire her in a sort of ecstacy of silence, punctuated with grunts of satisfaction; and the larger she grew, and when she began to toddle about on the dirt floor of the cabin, their admiration knew no bounds, and then and there the Trilby inspiration took shape and form.
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One busy day, when Father Hamlin was on a journey to the mill and Mother Hamlin was busy with her household cares and duties and Baby Ham- lin slept like a top in her sugar trough cradle, a delegation of Wyandots in gala attire invaded the cabin and, instead of depleting the larder, depleted the cradle and marched Indian file, the chief leading, with Keziah in his arms, and disappeared in the direction of the Indian village, in the dense forest at the bend of the Scioto, where the Harrisburg bridge now spans the river.
It would be impossible to depict the feelings of the mother. She simply endured the terrors of the situation for hours, which passed like slow-paced centuries, buoyed up only by the faint hope that the children of the forest were merely playing some good natured prank on her. Realizing the useless- ness of pursuit, nothing was left her but to cling to hope and endure and long for the return of her husband. Hours before his return (far past nightfall) the Indians returned, with their tiny captive smiling and cooing in the arms of the bronzed chieftain, and she too was resplendent in gala attire. In addi- tion to the other gay outfitting, her feet were encased in a pair of dainty and artistically beaded buckskin moccasins.
The Wyandot manteau and moccasin makers, for the purpose of giving the mother a happy surprise, had unceremoniously carried the child to their own town, where she could be fitted out and become a Wyandot Princess, and as such they had evidently adopted her before returning her. For many years Keziah retained the moccasins and trinkets, and told the story of that adventure to her children and her children's children. Finally the younger generations a few years ago unconsciously imbibed iconoclastic ideas, and the relics disappeared piecemeal.
Keziah Hamlin married David Brooks, who came from Massachusetts and settled in Columbus on the 19th of December, 1822. She died February 4, 1875, leaving three sons and two daughters. One of the sons, David W. Brooks, was prominent in business and banking circles in the city. Herbert Brooks, a grandson, is prominent in the same circles in the Columbus of 1909.
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The First State Senator.
The first year after his arrival Culbertson was elected to the Ohio legisla- ture, being the first member elected from the Franklin county section of Ross county in the senate of the first general assembly of the state in 1803.
The First Mill West of the River.
The first mill was located in the Franklinton section in 1797 or 1798. It was a public utility and the first instance of public ownership, hereabouts at least. All the people helped to build it and all the people helped to run it. The contemporaneous chronicler describes it as "a kind of a hand mill upon which they (the inhabitants) generally ground their corn; some pounded it or boiled it." The latter were probably opposed to public ownership. "Occa- sionally," says the pioneer historian, "a trip was made to the mill at Chilli- cothe." One may easily conjecture why this long trip to mill, through the wilderness, was made. The housewife was expecting company, no doubt some Revolutionary hero or some grand dame, coming from the east perhaps, and she wanted fine meal to enable her to furnish her guests with tempting johnny cake, and perchance the guests were coming from "Ole Ferginia," and what would be more to their liking than the peerless crackling shortened corn dodger, heightened to the seventh gastronomic heaven with the pale ambered and divinely saccharined maple molasses! It was worth an hundred mile round trip to secure the ingredients for such a feast.
The First Mill East of the River.
"In 1790 or 1800 Robert Balentine," says the early historian, "erected a poor kind of a mill" on the Run, near the present line of Gay street, but whether east or west of Gay street it is not stated. The Run, however, is not there at the present writing.
The First Up-River Mill.
"At about the same period John D. Rush erected," in the frank language of the historian, "an inferior mill on the Scioto a short distance above Frank- linton." They were, however, both poor concerns and soon fell into ruins, and clearly enough the "sound of the grinding" was not only "low," but the grass- hopper had no musical rival to divide the honors with him; but not for long.
The First Horse Mill.
Then, as a last resort, some pioneer, whose name is lost to immortal fame, erected a horse mill and managed to eke out sufficient corn meal to meet the demand of the growing metropolis.
The First Successful Mill.
Then it was, in 1805, that at a point near Worthington, Colonel James Kilbourne erected a mill imbued, as it were, with the spirit of the eighteenth
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century. It was a mill built on modern lines and principles and turned out wheat and buckwheat flour and corn meal in a steady stream and started Franklin county on the road to greatness, and after this there were mills and mills erected on all the streams in the vicinity of Columbus; men laid by a competence for themselves ; became more than honest millers-leading citizens of county and state, whose names will continue to grace and ornament the general local annals for decades, and in many instances for centuries yet to come, as may be well and truly said of the proprietors of Carpenter's Mill on the Whetstone, Dyer's Mill on Darby, Nelson's on Alum creek and others con- temporaneous with them in the first decade and the first half of the second decade of the century.
The First Mercantile Venture.
Nearly all, if not all, beginnings are small, and in accordance with that recognized law it is to be expected that the first things are small, although when we contemplate them in their fully developed form it staggers our credu- lity to think of them as merely tiny bubbles on the ocean of mercantile adven- ture.
Mr. James Scott in 1798 or 1799, the precise date being in doubt, opened "the first small store in Franklinton, which added much to the convenience of the settlers." It was certainly a great convenience to the Franklinton housewife, since she could get breakfast, wash the dishes, tidy up the cabin, go to Mr. Scott's store, purchase three yards of brown muslin and a skein of thread, return home and cut out and make a shirt for her husband, get dinner and supper meantime, and have the garment finished in time for her husband to wear down to "the public square," where the men folks met and told hunt- ing stories in the gloaming of the forest twilight and on contemporaneous sub- jects, while her ears tingled, a la telepathy, at the praises of the young men touching the neat hemming and hemstitching on the shirt aforesaid.
The next store, and probably a larger one, was started by Robert Russell, Esquire, in 1803. So far as can be learned, there are now no direct successors to those merchant princes of the then unbuilt city.
The First Unseen Terror.
This was what was variously designated "ague, ager, fever'n-nager, chills and fever," and now recorded in the books as "malaria" or "malarial fever." The original, however, could have gotten in its work on the pioneers even if it had been unnamed.
The First Capital Execution.
The first execution in the county, and within the suburbs of the present city, was that of Shateyaronyah, Anglicized into Leather Lips, a celebrated Wyandot chief and philosopher. The account was originally recorded by Otway Curry, the poet and magazine writer of the first half of the nineteenth
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century, and from which his nephew, Colonel William L. Curry, a valiant cav- alry officer in the civil war and present pension commissioner of Ohio, fur- nishes the following tragically interesting synopsis :
The Doomed Wyandot.
"The great northern family of Indian tribes which seems to have been originally embraced in the generic term Iroquois consisted, according to some writers, of two grand divisions-the eastern and western. In the eastern division were included the five nations or Maquas (Mingos), as they were commonly called by the Algonquin tribes, and in the western the Yendots, or Wyandots (nick-named Hurons by the French) and three or four other nations, of whom a large proportion are now entirely extinct. The Yendots, after a long and deadly warfare, were nearly exterminated by the Five Nations about the middle of the seventeenth century. Of the survivors part sought refuge in Canada, where their descendants still remain; a few were incorpo- rated among the different tribes of the conquerors, and the remainder, consist- ing chiefly of the Tionontates, retired to Lake Superior. In consequence of the disastrous wars in which they afterwards became involved with other pow- erful nations of the northwestern region, they again repaired to the vicinity of their old hunting grounds. With this remnant of the original Huron or Wyandot nation were united some scattered fragments of other broken-up tribes of the same stock, and though comparatively few in number they con- tinued for a long period to assert successfully the right of sovereignty over the whole extent of country between the Ohio river and the lakes as far west as the territory of the Piankishaws, or Miamis, whose eastern boundary was probably an irregular line drawn through the valley of the Great Miami (Shimeamee) and the Ottawah-se-pee, or Maumee river of Lake Erie. The Shawanees and the Delawares, it is believed, were occupants of a part of the fore-mentioned country merely by sufferance of the Wyandots, whose right of dominion seemed never to have been called in question excepting by the Mingoes or Five Nations. The Shawanees were originally powerful and always warlike. Kentucky received its name from them in the course of their migra- tions between their former place of residence on the Suanee river, adjacent to the southern sea-coast, and the territory of the Yendots in the North. The name (Kentuckee) is compounded from the Shawanees and signifies a "land or place at the head of a river."
"The chosen residence of the Wyandots was at an early period, as it was later, on the waters of the Saun-dus-tee, or Sandusky. Though greatly reduced in numbers, they have, perhaps, attained a higher degree of civilization than any other tribe in the vicinity of the northwestern lakes. For the following specimen of the Wyandot language and for the greater part of the statements given above we are indebted to the Archaeologia Americana.
The Wyandot Vocabulary.
One, Scat. Three, Shaight.
Two, Tin-dee. Four, An-daght.
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